Weapons of Math Destruction

As algorithms increasingly mediate education, employment, consumer credit, and the criminal justice system, how do we measure their impact on our society?

Tracing her experiences as a mathematician and data scientist working in academia, finance, and advertising, Cathy O’Neil will walk us through what she has learned about the pervasive, opaque, and unaccountable mathematical models that regulate our lives, micromanage our economy, and shape our behavior. Cathy will examine how statistical models often pose as neutral mathematical tools, lending a veneer of objectivity to decisions that can severely harm people at critical life moments.

Cathy will also share her concerns around how these models are trained, optimized, and operated at scale in ways that she deems to be arbitrary and statistically unsound and can lead to pernicious feedback loops that reinforce and magnify inequality in our society, rather than rooting it out. She will also suggest solutions and possibilities for building mathematical models that could lead to greater fairness and less harm and suffering.